The Murderer in Ruins (29 page)

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. Erna Berg popped her head in. ‘You have a visitor.’

It was Andreas Brems from the Search Office.

S
tave wanted to get up, as politeness demanded, but all of a sudden his leg went as limp as a deflated bicycle tube. He was about to say something but he couldn’t get a word out.

The researcher, no doubt used to giving people bad news, smiled forgivingly, pulled up a chair, sat down and unfolded a sheet of paper, all without saying a word. Then he pointed down at what was
a mimeographed sheet of paper with a list of names on it. Names, names and more names.

‘We’ve found your son,’ he said. And quickly added: ‘Alive.’

Stave gripped the edges of his desk, his mind in a whirl. Karl, a 17-year-old in a Wehrmacht uniform far too big for him, a look of scorn and disgust on his face as he said farewell to his father. Stave forced himself to thank Brems formally, shook his hand across the desk, then bent his head over the list, lifted it in his hand, no longer caring that it was trembling so much it was making the sheet of paper rustle.

The one and only link to his son: ‘Stave, Karl.’

And then one more word. Stave stopped and read it again, having no idea what it meant. ‘What does this mean? Vorkuta.’

‘It’s where your son is at present.’ Brems cleared his throat. ‘A prisoner-of-war camp. In Siberia.’

‘Siberia?’

Stave closed his eyes. People in Hamburg had been talking for months about ‘Siberian temperatures’. And he’d seen the bodies of the murderer’s victims, frozen to the ground. He’d heard of others frozen stiff too; victims not of a murderer but of the cold itself. If it was as cold as this in Hamburg, what must it be like out there?

‘What can I do?’ he heard himself say flatly, though his voice was filled with hope.

‘Nothing. At least not for the moment. The Red Cross furnished us this list. It may be that at some stage a representative will gain access to the camp to talk to the prisoners or bring them post. We can’t be certain of that, but we will do everything we can to improve conditions for the prisoners.’

‘When will they let him go?’

‘Ask Comrade Stalin. Nobody can say. When the trains were still running, prisoners did return from Siberia. At the moment it’s still too cold, but the winter won’t last forever.’

‘Can I write to him at least?’

‘We’ll be happy to take a letter for you. But there’s no rush. It will
take weeks before we can get a representative to northern Russia. If at all. You’re confused. Happy but confused. I understand that. I see it every day. For now just enjoy the good news. Give it time to sink in. Wait until then before writing a letter.’

‘One way or another, at least he’s been found.’

‘And once we’ve found someone, we don’t lose track of them.’

At last Stave managed to get up from his chair. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said. ‘And for coming to tell me personally.’

‘You came often enough to us,’ said Brems, shaking his hand in farewell.

When he left the room, Stave stared out of the window again. Night was coming on, black as ink. In the outside office he heard a chair scrape over the linoleum floor: Erna Berg getting up from her desk to go home. An air bubble gurgled in a radiator that was little more than cold, the sound of footsteps down the corridor, and then nothing but the silence of an abandoned question.

I need to get myself a map of Russia, Stave thought to himself. Find out where Vorkuta is.

S
tave woke up and sensed something had changed. For a second he was afraid there was somebody else in the room. He sat up, looked around. Nobody there. It was only then that he realised what it was that had changed.

Outside a bird was singing. There was no hard sheet of ice across his window, just puddles on the window sill where the frozen patterns made by the frost had melted. He could no longer see his breath, his hands no longer ached, he didn’t automatically shiver, not even when his bare feet touched the floor.

Carefully Stave got to his feet, still not trusting the temperature, made his way to the window and looked out. He could see sunlight. The wall opposite shone a warm yellow. Three or four people were walking along the street, still cautiously wrapped in coats and scarves. One of them dared to take his hat off. When did I last see that, Stave asked himself. An uncovered head in the open air.

He didn’t bother with breakfast, just splashed some water on his face and dashed to the door. Should he take his coat or not? Let’s not be overconfident, he thought and grabbed the heavy woollen thing. He took his gun, shoved it inside his jacket, along with his police ID. But he left his pocket torch lying on the shelf below the clothes hook. Why would he need a torch on such a bright and sunny day?

Out on the street, he felt as if his body was divided in two, with the border somewhere just above his knees. The ground was still frozen solid, and the cold crept up from it. Stave took a deep breath, hoping to inhale the promise of spring: flowers, leaves, grass. But it
was still too early for that. The odour of dust, rust and decay still filled his nose, stronger than ever. He unbuttoned his coat, walking slowly, revelling in every footstep. At the street corner people queued in their dozens, tin buckets, jugs, old canisters in their hands, waiting patiently for their turn to fill up whatever container they had with water from a stand pump. These were the unlucky ones whose domestic water pipes had burst over the past few weeks and had since been obliged to get their water from pumps out on the streets. Stave walked past the queue; until yesterday it had been a silent wall of wrapped-up shapes, today he could see faces, hear people talking. From somewhere he even heard a laugh from behind him as he walked along the road. An old man walking towards him doffed his hat in greeting. When he glanced at a passing woman, she blushed and smiled shyly. A couple of schoolboys were kicking a broken cobblestone back and forth, before finally kicking it into the ruins. Survivors, thought Stave to himself, that’s what we are: survivors.

He wondered if the thaw had set in out in Siberia. Or would it still be cold there? With Brems’s help he had located Vorkuta after failing himself to find anywhere of that name on the map of the Soviet Union he had acquired. A dot at the northern end of the Ural Mountains. Far, far away from any town or railway line marked on the map. The chief inspector asked himself how his son might have got there, from Berlin to Vorkuta. He had written a letter to him, sitting over it by candlelight one long night. It had been difficult to find the words. ‘You’re no poet,’ Anna von Veckinhuasen had teased him.

He had not mentioned her to his son. He was too ashamed. He didn’t mention the rubble murderer either. Instead he wrote of Margarethe, memories, described Hamburg, but not in too much detail. He didn’t want to worry his son. General stuff. Only at the end, when he had signed off with ‘Your father’, did he add, as a postscript: ‘I love you and miss you.’

When had he last told his son that? Had he ever? He couldn’t remember having done so.

Survivors, Stave thought to himself again, glancing discreetly at the passers-by on the street, walking as if they’d just been liberated from some camp. If we could survive this winter in Hamburg, why not in Vorkuta too? Karl was young and strong. He would survive. He had to.

It was four weeks since MacDonald had come clean to him about the stolen files, and revealed the existence of Operation Bottleneck. Four weeks since he had found out Maschke’s true identity. Four tough weeks in which nothing else had happened.

But that in itself was something, the chief inspector told himself. There had been no more bodies. Every day with no new spectacular discovery saw the leash he was on lengthen a little. Stave felt he could act a little more freely, as if he had more room to manoeuvre. No new corpse meant no new headline. No popular panic. And no panic had meant no more awkward questions from the mayor, or Cuddel Breuer, or Ehrlich. And now overnight, like a miracle, it was spring. Before long everyone would have forgotten the rubble murderer.

Everyone but me, Stave thought. I won’t.

W
hen Stave got to the office, Erna Berg turned her head away while saying hello to him. The chief inspector stopped for a moment, bent down and looked her in the face. Her right eye was swollen and bruised.

‘Your husband?’ he asked.

She nodded towards her stomach, which was slightly but noticeably distended. ‘I told him. I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer.’

‘I’ll deal with it,’ said MacDonald who had come in from the hallway without either of them noticing.

‘Let’s talk in my office, not out here,’ Stave said.

‘All three of us,’ the lieutenant said, taking Erna Berg’s arm.

‘What do you want to do?’ Stave asked, sitting down at his desk.

Erna Berg sat opposite, MacDonald standing behind with his hands on her shoulders.

‘I want to get divorced,’ the secretary answered.

‘I have already got Frau Berg an apartment,’ the lieutenant said. ‘And when this sorry affair has been dealt with, we’re going to get married.’ He smiled.

‘But you already have a son,’ Stave said. He said no more. The way things stood, a judge would almost certainly give the father custody; it was the mother who had committed adultery.

‘I’ll deal with it,’ MacDonald said. He sounded determined. ‘The boy will grow up living with us.’

The chief inspector stared at him long and hard until he realised that the lieutenant was serious – and that the lieutenant would win. He should have felt sympathy for Erna Berg’s husband, who had lost a leg in the war and now was going to lose his family too. But he had been shocked at the sight of his secretary’s swollen eye. All of a sudden, without intending it, his sympathies had switched to this young British officer who was so polite, so self-confident, so nonchalant, everything that he, Stave, was not.

‘You have my blessing,’ he said.

‘I wasn’t aware you were a pastor,’ MacDonald said.

Stave could see a twitch in the side of Erna Berg’s face that wasn’t swollen. Any minute now she’s going to burst into tears, he realised.

‘Any new developments in the case?’ he asked, before they all went sentimental.

‘No, Chief Inspector,’ his secretary answered, taking a deep breath, pulling herself together and smiling shyly, almost conspiratorially. ‘No new bodies. And no queries from Herr Breuer.’

‘I’m not sure which I was dreading more,’ Stave sighed with relief. Then he lifted his right hand as if he were trying to scare the pair of them away, but the gesture became part blessing, part friendly wave.

‘Take some time off,’ he said. ‘You’ll need time to sort out your new apartment. And I imagine there are one or two other things you need to deal with.’

Within 30 seconds they were gone.

S
tave sat there looking at the thin files on the murder case, spread out neatly on his desk. He was beginning to realise that he wasn’t going to get any further. And that he probably never would.

The fact that there was no new victim was on the one hand a good thing, but it could also mean that there was no opportunity for the killer to make a mistake. The murders could be at an end because he was afraid that a victim might fight back successfully, or that somebody would spot him in the act. Or that somebody in Hamburg would come forth to identify the victims. It might mean it was all over, without a proper ending.

Now that the thaw had set in, it would eventually rain. And rain would soak the posters on the streets and wash the photos to the ground, along with Stave’s urgent pleas for help. There was no way he would get permission to print new ones, to worry people again.

What was he to do with these four cases? The paperwork was spread across his desk; he’d carried out every search imaginable, questioned every witness he could find, followed every lead. Maybe, at some stage, chance would come to his assistance. Maybe the killer would get drunk in some bar and give himself away; it had happened before. Maybe some newcomer to Hamburg would find one of the few posters to survive the winter and call in to say, ‘I know who that is.’

But what if they didn’t? Then the rubble murderer would get away with it, Stave was forced to admit. And I’ll spend the rest of my life thinking about it, he thought. And I’ll never stop asking myself: what might you have missed?

Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to do any good, he told himself, carefully collecting the folders and putting them back in the filing cabinet. He got up from his chair and strode towards the door, another file under his arm: the personnel file on Lothar Maschke that MacDonald had procured for him. And another couple of interesting documents. It was time to go and talk to Ehrlich.

But as he walked down the corridor, he kept thinking to himself, what might I have missed? Missed? Down the staircase with the
irritating pattern on the steps. Missed? Through the entrance hallway, past the little bronze elephant. Missed? Past the Mercedes outside in the street. Missed? Walking to Ehrlich’s office. Missed? The sculpture of a woman. Ehrlich. Woman. Ehrlich.

‘What an idiot I am!’ he suddenly shouted aloud.

And he began running.

S
tave ran all the way back to the office. Damn his leg. He was running so fast that he stumbled. By the time he was back outside the grandiose building he was coughing for breath. The Mercedes was still standing there. The key was in the ignition. Stave pulled the door open, jumped into the driver’s seat and sped off with the engine howling. To hell with traffic rules.

There were bicycles everywhere and people out walking, soaking up the sun. The chief inspector swore, parped the horn, held the steering wheel tight as he roared round the bends.

The answer had been lying on his desk for a month, but not in the files he had so worried about, but in his own notebook. And I didn’t see it. He could have thumped himself in the face. I just hope the witness is still alive, he suddenly thought. I just hope she isn’t one of those who froze to death over the course of this long winter.

Yvonne Delluc.

He had made a note of the name. Then struck it out. She was one of the survivors of Oradour. And he had seen the name before, in Maschke’s card index. The card index in which the vice squad man had noted all the names of his ladies of the night and their pimps. He could see it in his mind’s eye now as clearly as if he had just crept into his colleague’s office an hour ago.

‘Yvonne Delluc. Has family here.’

A Frenchwoman. And a survivor of Oradour. An earring from a Parisian jeweller. Stave had no idea what else she might have lost along the banks of the Elbe. But it was no wonder nobody had come forward to identify her. Not one of her neighbours. Not one of the British. None of the DPs – who were in any case former forced
labour workers or former concentration camp inmates, whereas the survivors of Oradour were normal French citizens from the provinces. Nobody had dragged them to Hamburg.

‘Has family here,’ the note Maschke/Herthge had made. Somehow or other the Oradour survivor had bumped into the only surviving Oradour killer, and he had taken a note of her name. And the fact that she had other family here.

Could Yvonne Delluc have been the young woman? Or the older woman? Or even the child? Stave would find out. Maybe.

He put his foot down, the engine roared, the tyres squealed as he turned yet another bend.

How would he have come across Yvonne Delluc? By chance, when he had been looking for witnesses along the Reeperbahn, one of the hookers had mentioned that one of the vice squad men seemed a bit over-keen – to the extent that he accused ordinary harmless women of being prostitutes. Could that have been how he came across Yvonne Delluc? An elegant woman, not someone worn and haggard, a woman with a French name. Lots of prostitutes used French names, but in this case it happened to be her real name. Maschke might have thought he was checking out a whore and suddenly realised he was dealing with one of the witnesses of the massacre he had taken part in. At which point he kills her. And then, just to be sure, wipes out the rest of her family.

Then he volunteers to join the investigation, just to keep tabs on it. So that he can do what he has to if suspicion points to him: plant false evidence or at least know in advance when it was time to disappear.

‘One Peter, One Peter, please call in.’

The voice over the radio caused Stave to flinch. Keeping his eyes on the road he thumped the radio furiously until it stopped.

The brakes screeched and the vehicle came to a shuddering halt. Stave leapt out of the car. There before him was the dark sinister bulk of the Eilbek bunker.

T
he chief inspector threw open the steel door and climbed the stairs to the first inhabited floor, dashing past the wooden partitions. The air was clammier than it had been on his first visit two months ago, warmer now, but mouldy and stuffy. The same ripped oilskin jackets hung at the entrance.

Stave sighed with relief: it meant Anton Thuman was still alive. He stomped into the man’s little cubicle. The old seaman sprang to his feet and had put up his fists before recognising him.

‘There are more polite ways of announcing one’s presence, Herr Commissar,’ he shouted at him, keeping his fists up.

The chief inspector managed, just, to control his anger. What angst he might have been spared if this man had just spoken up. One of the first witnesses he had spoken to, the day after they had discovered the first body! The young woman. He had mentioned a French family in the next cubicle who had been taken away by a policeman the day before. A policeman!

Stave reached into his jacket. Thuman’s eyes opened wide.

‘Don’t shoot!’ he called out.

The chief inspector ignored his pleas, and instead pulled out the photographs of the victims. Thuman, obviously relieved, put down his fists. Stave handed the photos to him, his hand shaking with anger.

‘The people who lived next door,’ the old seaman said indifferently. ‘The French.’

The chief inspector closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Why did you not report this to the police ages ago?’ he said, trying hard to keep calm.

‘Why should I have?’

‘Did you not see the posters all over the city?’ Stave asked, incredulously.

Thuman stared with empty eyes at the partition wall. ‘I hardly ever leave here. And if I do, I don’t look at stuff like that. In any case, I can’t read. Never learned to. Never needed to.’

Stave leant back against the wooden planks and ran his hand over his eyes.

‘Do you know what the family next door were called?’

‘We were never introduced.’

‘Delluc?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

‘Can you describe the family to me? How many of them were there? Men, women, children?’

‘An old guy who walked with a stick. Two women, ladies, if you know what I mean. One of them young and pretty but a bit cheeky. The other was also pretty, but a bit older. And a kid.’

‘A little girl?’

‘How old?’

‘No idea. I don’t have children. Small, though.’

The chief inspector sighed. Thuman’s hardly going to be a great witness in court, he sighed.

‘More like six? Or more like 14?’

‘More like six.’

‘Any more members of the family?’

‘Just those four in the photographs. As far as I know.’

Stave pulled out one more photograph. From Maschke’s personnel file.

‘Is this the policeman who took the family away?’

‘That’s him. Filled the place with smoke, but didn’t offer me a single Lucky Strike. Arrogant bastard.’

‘Did the family go with him willingly?’

‘Whoever goes willingly with the police?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They both looked unhappy. But the policeman didn’t have to act tough. No handcuffs, no truncheon. Didn’t go around shouting at people.’

‘Both?’

‘The older woman and the little girl. Neither of the others were there at the time. But they never came back either.’

‘Is their cubicle occupied again?’

‘Yes, but I don’t know their name.’

‘Doesn’t matter. But are any of the French family’s possessions still there?’

Thuman looked at the ground. ‘No, everything’s gone,’ he mumbled.

‘Gone? Did the policeman take their stuff?’

‘No, when the French lot didn’t come back after a few days, a few lads from upstairs came down and snaffled all their stuff.’

‘Go the police headquarters on Karl-Muck Platz, and ask for Inspector Müller. He’ll take your statement.’

‘Why aren’t you coming with me?’

‘Because I have other things to take care of.’

‘And what if I don’t go?’

‘Then you’ll end up in a hole that’ll make this bunker look like a luxury hotel.’

S
tave sped through the city. I just hope they’re not already out looking for this car, he thought. And I hope there’s enough fuel in the tank.

It took him more than an hour to get to the Warburg Children’s Health Home. He screeched to a halt before the gates, almost crashing into them, and parped his horn. The young man who had opened the gates for him before came running out.

‘What do you think you’re doing? We have children here,’ he remonstrated. But he opened the gates all the same.

‘I know,’ said Stave. ‘It’s one of them I’m here to see,’ and he put his foot down, and roared off up the drive sending gravel flying on either side.

Thérèse Dubois had been standing by the window of the veranda watching him, and opened the door a few seconds later.

‘You’ve caught him!’ she said.

‘I need to speak to Anouk Magaldi,’ Stave replied.

Five minutes later he was showing the girl the photos of the four victims. On his last two visits he hadn’t dared show the photos to the child.

And the warden had told him that the young children never left the villa grounds. So there would have been no way Anouk Magaldi could have seen the posters.

The little girl studied the photos, slowly, one by one. She looked sad but not particularly interested by the first three. Stave’s pulse raced. When he showed her the fourth, she flinched, and stared at it with tears in her eyes. It was the photo of the younger woman.

‘Mademoiselle Delluc,’ the little girl whispered.

The chief inspector sighed with relief and leaned back in the wicker chair.

‘An Oradour survivor?’ Thérèse Dubois asked.

‘Who finally met her murderer in Hamburg,’ Stave replied.

‘Your colleague?’

He nodded wearily. ‘My colleague, who joined the police under a false name. My colleague, who used to be an SS man and was probably the only surviving member of the brigade that committed the massacre. And here in Hamburg he came across a victim of his crime. He strangled her to eliminate a witness who could have landed him in court. Then stripped her naked so that nobody could identify her.’

‘What about the other three victims?’

Stave asked Anouk Magaldi, who told him that she had never seen any of Yvonne Delluc’s three relatives before. The young woman herself had not even been from Oradour. She had just been staying with friends. Her family had lived elsewhere.

‘Possibly in Paris,’ Stave murmured, thinking of the earrings. Then he remembered the medallions and showed the little girl a photo of one. She beamed at him, put her hand to her neck and from under her jumper pulled out an identical one.

Stave looked at the girl, then down at the little medallion in her hand, and muttered: ‘I was so close. So close, so often.’

Then he pulled himself together, and said, ‘What does it mean, the cross and two daggers?’

She answered, speaking fast, with pride in her voice. Thérèse
Dubois translated. ‘It’s the coat of arms of Oradour. Don’t ask me what the symbols stand for, but the few survivors all wear it, and their relatives too. In memory.’

‘Their relatives too,’ the chief inspector noted, with satisfaction. ‘At last I have everything I need. Can she tell me anything more about Yvonne Delluc? If she had a job? If she was married? If she had children?’

Anouk Magaldi thought, then shook her head, smiled and said, ‘
Elle est Juive, comme moi
.’

‘A Jew, like me,’ the warden translated. ‘Why would a Jew who had escaped a massacre come to the country of those who committed it?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid I have no answer for that,’ Stave said grimly. ‘But be patient. In time all the details will come out. In the next trial at the Curio House.’

I
t was lunchtime. Stave hoped Erhlich wouldn’t be out at some restaurant or in one of the British officers’ clubs. He had a few interesting things to put before the public prosecutor. He was in luck and before long was sitting at the prosecutor’s desk, the man’s eyes behind his thick glasses upon him.

Stave recounted the previous life of Lothar Maschke, whose real name was Hans Herthge and who had been in an
SS Panzergrenadier
unit. He told him about the little orphan in the children’s home in Warburg, and about the map he had found in Maschke’s desk, without going into detail about how the map came to be in his hands.

Ehrlich just nodded, clearly recalling that night they had bumped into one another in the vice squad man’s office. Next to the map Stave laid the Search Office’s index card with Maschke’s name on it. He told him about the coat of arms of the village of Oradour and the medallions found on two of the victims, about the Paris jeweller, about the illiterate seaman in the bunker who paid no attention to posters because he couldn’t read what was written on them, and
wasn’t surprised when a family living next door to him simply disappeared. A French family.

Ehrlich listened to him patiently, then smiled and polished his glasses. ‘So what is your version of the chain of events?’

‘Herthge alias Maschke bumps into Yvonne Delluc in Hamburg. I have no idea if he realised straight away that she was a survivor of Oradour. Or if it was her who recognised him and confronted him. Nor have I any idea what this young woman and the other members of her family were doing in our city. Nor do I know what relationship they bore to one another.

‘But they meet, and Herthge/Maschke realises she could send him to the gallows, and so he kills her. Probably not when they first meet. Maybe he runs off. Or maybe she doesn’t recognise him straight away. Or maybe he kidnaps her and holds her prisoner. Either way he has time enough to make a note of her name on his index card and the fact that she had relatives here. He obviously worked that out one way or another.

‘He’s also careful, methodical. He waits until he knows more about Yvonne Delluc’s circumstances, then he strikes, mercilessly, eliminating all the evidence. He murders Yvonne Delluc somewhere in the city and hides her body in the ruins. How he got her body there I still don’t know. Then he lies in wait for the old man and when he finds him, murders him on the spot. Maybe he found out he always took the same route. Then finally, on some pretext or other, he lures the other woman and child out of the bunker. They probably have no idea what’s going on, they weren’t in Oradour. Once they’re out of the Eilbek bunker, he kills them and dumps their bodies. It’s not impossible that he got hold of a police vehicle and used it to transport them to near where we later found them, and then dumped them in the ruins when the moment was right.